ASIA Matters for America

New Exhibition Highlights Japanese Americans in World War II

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by
ALISON MA on Apr 5, 2017

Featured in: Asia, Japan

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, DC opened a new exhibit dedicated to the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. [Image: Wikimedia Commons, free media repository]

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, DC opened a special exhibition in February, about people of Japanese ancestry sent to US internment camps during World War II. The exhibition, “Righting a Wrong,” commemorated the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt in 1942. The order led to the detainment of 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent as response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Japanese Americans — both citizens and aliens — on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes and were shipped to inland relocation centers for the remainder of the war. The centers were remote, primitive camps with armed guards, barbed wire, and rationing of resources. Though President Ford issued a formal apology to the internees in 1976, saying their incarceration was a “setback to fundamental American principles,” and President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act as compensation, the order acts as painful historical lesson on the importance of civil liberties.